Tag Archives: artwork

I had to think long and hard about this. I don’t know how to go about it because I myself am really the opposite of a nudist or a naturist. I cover up parts of me in public that most people don’t because of psoriasis and unsightly sores on my arms, hands, neck, and jawline. But I used to know naturists. I have walked among them, even though I was never brave enough to actually walk naked among them. But I have this goofy thought that has been nagging me from a back corner of the upstairs filing rooms of my stupid old head. All people are actually nudists under their clothes.

Now, if a doofus is trying to argue something as crazily goofy as this, he better have some good main points backed up by real research. I, of course, am probably not as sensible as that, so let me go with these three main points;

Public nudity is not an invasion of privacy since the person pretty much has to be intentionally nude, and they are not revealing anything that isn’t true of all of us.

Artists really need to draw and paint nudes because one can’t create realistic figures without discovering how to do it by practice.

Naked people are generally happier and more sane than the rest of us.

When I was visiting my girlfriend in the 1980’s at the clothing-optional apartment complex in Austin, Texas, I did not option for naked. And I really couldn’t protest naked hairy guys strutting in front of me by the pool because I knew what was inside the gate when I knocked the first time. Nudists are not really suffering from invasion of privacy. They choose to be naked and choose to be in these places like nude beaches where other people are naked too.

You don’t accidentally become a nudist. (Even though I wrote a novel about a boy accidentally becoming a nudist in Iowa in the 70’s.) Even the nudists I have posted in these pictures are not having their privacy violated. These images originate with old naturist publications purchased in the 80’s. That means they intended them to be seen. In fact, I am able to find ample nudism seeking an audience on Facebook and Twitter.

And either drawing nude models is an essential part of art training, or all people who learn to draw are perverts and just make art so they can ogle nude models. I wrote in this crazy blog before about my experience with college-level nude drawing class. I got a “C+”, not because I wasn’t any good at drawing the naked female art students and naked exhibitionist hairy guys that posed for us, but because the teacher was hyper critical and probably anal-retentive just the way all really exceptional art teachers probably are.

I am quite capable of drawing the delicate and exquisite nude figure without becoming a gynecological illustrator or even a crude, rude dude. And there is art to it. It is not meaningless.

But in the final analysis, we all have a bit of the nudist instinct in us. We all secretly enjoy those times when we were able to be naked, however briefly, in the warm enfolding light of the sun. If you have not experienced that and don’t know what I’m talking about, then why have you read this far through the post? Why have my posts about drawing nudes and being around naturists been my most popular posts?

We have that urge to go naked because that is how God made us. Being naked in the company of other naked people is actually good for you. At least, Scientific American thinks so.

In truth, my time among the naturists helped me recover from the trauma of being sexually assaulted by another boy when I was ten. That was a long, painful journey that deprived me for a while of being able to be naked. For a while I was too damaged to be a happy naturist. But I have come so far now; I can even make this admission in writing. I would like to be a nudist, even if only for a very brief while. In fact, I think we are all at least a bit like that. Now, if only my skin would stop flaking and peeling off.

I drew this face as a doodle while watching an episode of Iron Fist on Netflix. I don’t think it is anybody in the show I was watching, actor or character or comic book villain, but I can’t help but think that Doodleface is a great name for a Dick Tracy villain.

Of course, a doodle is a drawing done with only half-attention being paid. I was not ignoring Iron Fist as I drew this. I did not take time to plan it out with a pencil sketch. I started drawing the right eye, thinking it w ould probably become a girl’s face. When I tried to match the first eye with a second, it came out mismatched enough that she morphed into a villain. Bilateral symmetry equals beauty. Asymmetry equals comedy goofball or possibly villain. As I framed the eyes and developed the center of the face down to the chin, the chance to make a Natasha or an Olga Badenov sort of villain dissipated to the point of masculine villainy. That probably explains the curly hair, since the villain Bakuto in Iron Fist had curly hair. But curiously, this drawing-while- watching-TV fellow is not Bakuto. This guy has no beard. And in the episode I watched, Bakuto had a beard. And Bakuto also ended the episode with a knife sticking out of his general heart-area, not a good sign for his personal health and wellness, though in a comic book plot… well, who knows?

So, if Doodleface is a Dick Tracy villain, how did he get his name and what is his special thing? Pruneface was pruney in the face. Mumbles couldn’t talk so you could understand him. Flattop had a head that was flat on the top like a table. So Doodleface is obviously a master of disguise. He must possess a magic pen acquired in the mysterious Orient in the 1920’s, one that clearly allows him to redraw his features at any given time so he cannot be recognized. And hopefully, he draws well enough that coppers won’t just take one look and say, “Hey, dat guy over dere has a squiggle drawn all over his mug! Dat must be Doodleface!!!” (Of course it has to be three exclamation points because… well, cartoon exaggeration!!!)

And all of this is, of course, evidence that even when I am watching a fairly good show on TV (Iron Fist is not Daredevil or Luke Cage in its levels of amazing Marvel comics goodness) my mind and my drawing hand are both still busy doing their own thing as well. Doodling is an artsy-fartsy way to kill time and fill up empty spaces. My entire blog is basically the same in this purpose. But I am able to use the doodle imperative to create and be creative, to learn and to grow, and possibly make up something worth keeping.

I was an aficionado of HO model trains as a kid. I continued that horrendous fixation with 1/78th scale worlds long into my extended juvenile immaturity (I was an unmarried teacher of middle school students until 1995.) Even after I was married, my wife allowed me, to a very limited degree, to continue to be a train man.

I spent a good deal of time over the years building building plastic model kits of buildings, painting and repainting plaster model buildings, and collecting engines, rolling stock, and trackside details. Painting little 1/78th scale people is definitely an exercise for steady hands and a zen-like, highly focused mind.

But that all reached an impasse when we moved to the Dallas area. I had to tear down my train layout, box up my trains, and put everything on hold until I had another place to build and create my HO model-train world. So, while it was all boxed up and transported to first, a house that we rented from my brother-in-law, and then a house that we bought, it got shifted around and stacked inappropriately, and grandma put some really heavy items on top to crush and mangle my treasures. It also spent a night outside in the rain when my brother-in-law’s water heater had to be replaced in the garage where everything was stored. I was not a happy camper for a while.

Now, a decade later, I am still taking the tiny items and trying to glue the pieces back together. I have basically given up trying to get the trains to run again. But I can use the bits and pieces of Toonerville to make pictures like these. It makes the art-parts of my psyche and soul a little happier.

Old number 99 had to have the front part where the headlamp is located reattached and restored. It gave me something to do this weekend while I was down with a bad back and breathing difficulties. It would be neat to put the train table back together and get things set up once again, but there is no space, and no unlimited funds, and less and less time. So for now, the train man comes back to me to rebuild in photographs and in my imagination.

Mickey is suffering from too much politixity and angriefied argumentery to sleep well and eat well . He has been eating , sleeping , and breathing polytix to the point that he can’t even spell properly any more . Besides , pollertix doesn’t taste so good when you have to eat it after an election that went wrong .

So Mickey started doing what Mickey always doo . He started to draw. First with pencil , then with black ink . And then he started to color it in with colored pencil. The spelling started to get better . And not just because Mickey stopped having fist fights with the spell check .

Other art projects helped too. Like photographing Trolls in the Cardboard Castle .

So, if the things that Mickey do help to save the brain , then he better doo before it all becomes doo doo.

My biggest regret as a cartoonist and waster of art supplies is the fact that I am not the world’s best portrait artist. I can only rarely make a work of art look like a real person. Usually the subject has to to be a person I love or care deeply about. This 1983 picture of Ruben looks very like him to me, though he probably wouldn’t recognize himself here as the 8th grader who told me in the fall of 1981 that I was his favorite teacher. That admission on his part kept me from quitting and failing as a first year teacher overwhelmed by the challenges of a poor school district in deep South Texas.

My Great Grandma Hinckley was really great.

My great grandmother on my mother’s side passed away as the 1970’s came to an end. I tried to immortalize her with a work of art. I drew the sketch above to make a painting of her. All my relatives were amazed at the picture. They loved it immensely. I gave the painting to my Grandma Aldrich, her second eldest daughter. And it got put away in a closet at the farmhouse. It made my grandma too sad to look at every day. So the actual painting is still in a closet in Iowa.

There were, of course, numerous students that made my life a living heck, especially during my early years as a teacher. But I was one of those unusual teachers (possibly insane teachers) who learned to love the bad kids. Love/hate relationships tend to endure in your memory almost as long as the loving ones. I was always able to pull the good out of certain kids… at least in portraits of them.

When kids pose for pictures, they are not usually patient enough to sit for a portrait artist. I learned early on to work from photographs, though it has the disadvantage of being only two-dimensional. Sometimes you have to cartoonify the subject to get the real essence of the person you are capturing in artiness.

But I can’t get to the point of this essay without acknowledging the fact that any artist who tries to make a portrait, is not a camera. The artist has to put down on paper or canvas what he sees in his own head. That means the work of art is filtered through the artist’s goofy brain and is transformed by all his quirks and abnormalities. Therefore any work of art, including a portrait that looks like its subject, is really a picture of the artist himself. So, I guess I owe you some self portraits to compare.

Today, in view of ill health and brain pain, I will share with you some of the more picture-intensive thinking going on in my sick old artsy-fartsy brain. Less words equals less headache.

The subject today is Toonerville, the little town that once existed on my HO model train layout, and now lives on my bookshelves and even more-so in my imagination. I have a file of photos I made of it intending to composite them into backgrounds and details in photo-shopped cartoons.

Notice how one building from different angles can look like many different places.

And details can be cropped out so that a building can be placed over a background in a composite image.

Thus a lighted model becomes Bill Freen’s house in Toonerville.

And I have many of these buildings to experiment with.

Sometimes this blithering nonsense can actually be quite fun and productive.

Honestly, I built these things from kits or painted and repainted them decades ago… but they are a part of a place that I still live in.